FCC’s Carr Calls Biden Plan ‘Power Grab’ Of Internet

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

WASHINGTON (Worthy News) – The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Brendan Carr has called President Joe Biden’s “digital equity plan” for all internet services an unprecedented “government power grab.”

In a statement obtained by Worthy News, Carr suggested that he feared his agency would give the green light to Biden’s plan in a vote as early as next Wednesday.

The FCC, which is in charge of the nation’s communications, was to choose whether to adopt the president’s plan to promote “equal access” to broadband internet access service.

A draft of the FCC order said the commission would implement a section of Biden’s 2021 infrastructure bill to establish a framework to “facilitate equal access to broadband internet access service by preventing digital discrimination of access to that service based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, and national origin.”

Carr said he opposes the order, as it would give the “Administrative State effective control of all Internet services and infrastructure

He added that “President Biden has called on the FCC to adopt new rules of breathtaking scope.”

Carr warned that the measures “would give the federal government a roving mandate to micromanage nearly every aspect of how the Internet functions.”

INTERNET PROVIDERS

That ranges “from how [internet service providers] ISPs allocate capital and where they build, to the services that consumers can purchase, from the profits that ISPs can realize and how they market and advertise services to the discounts and promotions that consumers can receive,” Carr added.

“Talk about central planning,” he added. “I oppose President Biden’s plan.”

Carr’s concern comes at a time of growing government control over the internet in several countries, impacting free speech, once the cornerstone of the internet.

In the United States, “for the first time ever, those rules would give the federal government a roving mandate to micromanage nearly every aspect of how the internet functions. From how internet service providers allocate capital and where they build to the services that consumers can purchase. And from the profits, ISPs can realize how they market and advertise services to the discounts and promotions consumers can receive.”

He said the Biden administration has “needlessly blocked and delayed” new broadband infrastructure builds. “Fiber and cell-site components are laying fallow in warehouses and laydown yards across the country due to the government’s failure to remove regulatory red tape.”

Permitting reform has gone nowhere, “and the Biden administration is preparing to waste additional taxpayer dollars through its multibillion-dollar “Internet for All” initiative by pursuing extraneous political goals at the expense of connecting Americans,” Carr complained.

But it remained uncertain whether his words would resonate among other FCC members to vote on a plan that was expected to impact Americans’ online lives for generations.

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